The ailing tabloid plumbed ever gloomier depths today as it headlined with a fake story about a Lebanese ‘child bride’ on its website. In a deliciously ironic twist, the Express managed to bamboozle its own readership as outraged readers pounded their keyboards in order to EXPRESS their fury.

The story, which involved a middle aged man posing with a child bride was a social experiment carried out in Beirut in order to gauge the reactions of passers by as the ‘happy couple’ posed for photographers – but many EXPRESS readers didn’t seem to get that bit.

What the right wing EXPRESS attack dogs don’t appear to understand is that nobody in their right mind, regardless of political persuasion, condones child abuse, child grooming or children being forced into marriage. The problem is that the EXPRESS and the extreme right seem to think that they alone are the possessors of a moral compass, ergo anyone who disagrees with them is a paedophile – even though that isn’t the point.

The sad truth is that these constant attacks are based on an old Nazi strategy. It’s all about dehumanising those who are viewed as enemies, instilling fear and hatred into everyday people and the removal of individuality. Hence the use of the word ‘migrants’ and the stream of sex attack stories. It’s cynical manipulation in order for the EXPRESS to reinforce its anti-EU stance among its gullible readership.

For all its jingoism it would be interesting to know how much the Express owner, Richard Desmond actually pays in taxes, and whether it would be in his own interests to exit the European Union.

In the meantime the EXPRESS continues to publish its UKIP inspired rubbish and the hate messages continue to pour in.

When it comes to dumb and dumber the EXPRESS surely takes the award for DUMBEST

We went into this year’s April tomfoolery with pretty low expectations, and frankly speaking this year’s media offerings were uninspiring at best. We did actively consider running a spoof article or a hoax story but decided against it, for the simple reason that everybody and his mother do it. They crank them out like clockwork and almost without exception they’re a load of old crap.

This year we’ve had the old square eggs chestnut, bubble wrapping cars at safari parks, introducing hippos to the South Downs and trampoline aisles in Tesco stores.

Then we had the corporate entries – Marmite Clear, ice cold beer delivered to your door within 30 minutes by drone and dehydrated pizzas. (Just add water, they swell up and then pop them in the oven.) Probably the dumbest pizza related April Fool’s was put out by Dominoes – driverless delivery bikes.

Probably our favourite though was that the silent majority of long-suffering Brits appear to regard Z-list ‘celebrity’ Katie Hopkins as some sort of heroic figure bravely standing up to the scourge of political correctness. That can’t possibly be anything but an April Fool’s stunt, right? We’re no fans of Katie Hopkins – she’s offended just about everybody imaginable, as has been well documented over her brief career – but come on… She spouts crap because she gets paid to do so, and the more controversial the crap she spouts the larger the cheques will be – at least that’s what we think. It’s just a pity that people get so wound up about this woman, but they do – she even gets a mention here, although we’d much rather ignore her. Ho hum… We can be hypocritical arseholes too.

Where were we?

Oh yes…April Fool’s pranks.

When the BBC ran that spoof Panorama segment decades ago about the spaghetti harvest it was the greatest spoof ever, and will never be bettered. It was, and remains the benchmark and nothing since has ever had anything like the same impact. It was the ultimate April Fool’s prank.